


Three Blessings

by orphan_account



Series: Forged in Fires [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Valyria, Westeros, discussion of rape/non con, mentions of rape/noncon, no graphic details
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:47:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24006871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: “Your ancestors were human, Jaehaerys. They were as flawed as all the other men in existence, and they often made horrible and exploitative decisions because it was in their interests. The game of thrones was started, in part, by putting their interests, and sometimes the interests of the family, over the interests of the kingdom or the people."She stands for many things, but above all she has always stood for family.
Relationships: Happy Hogan & Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Jon Snow, Peter Parker & May Parker, Peter Parker & Pepper Potts
Series: Forged in Fires [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1731361
Kudos: 8





	1. "May you burn as long as fires across the lands, as bright as the Fourteen Candles..."

**Author's Note:**

> The rape/noncon tag does not apply to this chapter or the following - only to chapter 3. As mentioned in the tags, this is discussed only in the dialogue and is not depicted.

She was brought forward to them, pulled from fires and thrown to the ground with the force of the magic that Loki had used to do it. And yet, knowing that Petra had returned did nothing to stymie the fear and tension Pepper had felt in the last weeks. Knowing her husband was one of many that had gone missing in the last few months put the pressure on Pepper as she tried to manage her daughter, her business, and the search for those that had been lost.

Petra looked slightly older than she ought. She had gone missing, gone missing defending Tony’s own things, at fifteen, had been gone nearly four years. And yet, she looked about 23 and bore herself in the manner of a woman far older than that. Her gown was of a fine yet sturdy fabric. There was detail in it, and there was delicate embroidery around the edges, hems, on the sleeves. Petra had her hair pulled up in a simple-looking style, simple enough, anyway. She had the air of a woman of status, certainly, for all that her immediate reaction was to pull Pepper into an embrace and introduce her to the man that had come through Loki’s spell with her.

Jon Snow, he called himself. Petra had smiled but called him also by Jaehaerys – a family name, she said, with no pride in it, but one “he ought to consider reworking, rewriting.”

Petra was quick to say she would find a place for herself and Jon, was quick to try to take herself out of Pepper’s way, while also offering any help and assistance she could. It almost broke Pepper’s heart, seeing that she was willing to work with her, but not to trust her. Jon was behind her, quiet in his following of the conversation.

“Petra, you can stay here. You’ve always been welcome, and more so now that you’re going to have to adjust to life here again.”

And adjust she would have to.

*

Petra wore her heavy clothes in the summer heat with a grace that one with her age normally would not. When Loki had gone through, Pepper had initially wondered if the extended nature of his travel meant he had made a mistake, meant that one more of their few remaining defenders had been lost to them. Instead, he said that there had been some interference, and the delay gave him the pause to give her the time to finish and wrap up the business she had there and to pack some things.

“She will take great comfort in her own possessions and clothes.” Loki was trailing a finger along a set of books. “And, I must admit, the possibility of reading some of her journals was intriguing.”

“Journals?”

Loki looked to her. She trusted him as far as she could throw him, but she also knew that he was one of the few people that had yet to disappear from their ranks. She had to rely on him, at least until they found the missing Avengers and she could return him to Thor and Valkyrie’s custody in New Asgard.

The feeling was mutual.

“She and Jon, they’re close.” He raised an eyebrow. “I may not know the full extent of it, but I would anticipate that he will be following her in whatever work she is doing, at least as much as he is able.”

“Yes, well, given I cannot give her a job in the sciences until she has a chance to truly get qualifications. I have some other ideas of what she can do, in the meantime.”

Loki finally sat across from her. She was more than willing to hold him in his seat for a moment while she looked back over the paperwork she had been working on in order to set up something approaching a legitimate residency for Jon and Petra. Loki knew her game, as was clear in the way his brows raised and lowered with a slight shake to his head. His mouth was in a thin line, and he looked about Pepper’s office.

She filled out the last few lines. Petra was easy – she was a missing, though unregistered, super with the connection to Stark Industries and to May Parker established enough to barely need verification. Jon was the one that would take more effort. She could wait for that one, though she still placed the paper in the outbox for her secretary and took an extra moment to look through the list on her computer.

Loki finally looked back to her.

_Gotcha._

She didn’t like mind games, but it would be best to keep Loki on his toes.

“You got her back for us. But do you have anything for us, anything about the others?”

“You know I don’t.” He shook his head. “And you know I’m looking.”

“You can find a girl you’ve never met, stuck in another world, but you can’t find people you’ve fought with and against. You can’t do that? You can’t find someone in our own reality?”

Loki bristled, but settled into his seat, meeting her eyes. “She was easy to find. You saw the fire she came through – that fire sings with her blood in it. Sings with _her_ in it. She was easy to find, once I knew how to look for her.

“What is there to lead me to Rogers, your husband, or the Romanova girl? Strange, perhaps, I could find if there was a similar inkling. However, there has been no indicator even of him.”

“You need something to find him?”

“Yes.” Loki raised one brow, barely betraying his opinion on the conversation. “But there’s been nothing to use.”

Pepper nodded. She would have to think on that.

*

Jon Snow and Petra were pleasant, with or without their trust. Petra was doting to him – an odd relationship dynamic that Pepper couldn’t place.

Morgan, all of three, adored Petra’s stories of the city of Valyria, of the Valyrian masters, as she termed them, and the dragons that flew ‘in a dance’ around the stone stronghold built into volcanoes and supported by candles. The magic of it captivated her daughter, for allPepper did not quite follow it. Yet, nor did Jon if she wasn’t mistaken. Jon paid careful attention, however, and asked questions with Morgan of these stories. This caused Morgan to latch onto Jon just as much, and it was lucky Pepper had decided minding her child was a wise way of maintaining her presence in the Compound and giving her at least something of an income. If anything, Morgan would have wise minders.

Jon’s sword, which he had brought with him in his affects, had been stored in the training room. He was a fierce fighter, and even in her gown Petra managed to keep up with him. Pepper had taken the time to watch her, so careful to stay on the edge of the room. Petra fought with an old, worn long knife, and the two fought with live steel with so little fear between the two of them. Some of this was trust, Pepper was certain, but there was comfort with a blade in it. Experience.

She clapped as the two finished. Petra and Jon turned towards her. Jon lowered his head towards her, muttered something sounding oddly like “Lady Stark”, while Petra’s head tilted back to take measure of Pepper. “Good to see you, Miss Stark.”

“Petra, I was hoping we could have some tea. Sit and talk, like before.”

They hadn’t been close, but Pepper had gone out of her way to have at least some relationship with Petra and May when Tony first started planning to recruit her. She had been nice enough then.

Petra nodded, deferent to Pepper’s wishes.

*

“Jon seems awfully quiet.” Pepper was trusting him as an extension of her trust for Petra. That did not mean that trust would last long. 

The tea was hot, too hot even, but Petra seemed not to notice as she went to take a sip. “He weighs his options, and he works for the good of the whole.”

*

Ultimately, Pepper had to wonder why she didn’t see something like this coming. The fire, certainly it made sense for that to be a surprise. But her life had hit new levels of shock and awe, so perhaps she shouldn’t have been so much so when Petra walked about the flames as though they were a mild breeze, pulling them up and concentrating them down, down, down into something akin to a small stone.


	2. "... May you long outlive your captors and chains..."

Happy’s greatest fear was putting the people he cared for in danger. He gravitated towards the kinds of people that had a tendency to push away care and to take care of themselves because it made the responsibility feel less palpable, and made it more tolerable if and when they left. Petra, for all she had been Tony’s intended protégé, had been the opposite of that and it riled Happy that Tony – who did the same damn thing – would pawn her off onto him to look after.

When she disappeared on them, he had been glad to have kept her at arms’ length. When she reappeared on them, he wondered if she was going to survive them all by sheer determination and stubborn attitude alone. If so, it was a depressing future that awaited her, laden with the deaths of all those she held dear.

The exception to Happy’s rule was Tony’s child, and that was more out of necessity and the knowledge that Tony had programmed every type of safety measure known to man to surround her and protect her when he couldn’t. That that time frame seemed to have changed from “periodic” to “indefinite” he may not have been able to predict, but he should have been able to predict a damn _fire_ given how damn often he started them in his own lab.

He hadn’t, though, and Happy thought he was being left to watch the boss’s daughter burn in the wreckage of the compound living quarters. It was going to kill him to have to break that news to Tony. He’d rather die in the fire, die in the wreckage there trying to get Morgan out, but he felt someone far stronger than he was holding him back.

Jon Snow may not have been a supersoldier or any sort of enhanced individual, but years of swinging swords and whatever the hell else he had been getting up to that had gotten Petra “Trouble Magnet” Parker wrapped up in his shit showed in his strength. He held Happy back without much effort and instead gestured to the fire. “She’ll get your girl from there.”

“What the hell?”

Petra wasn’t with them and damn if that wasn’t just typical; enhanced fuckers getting back from their disappearance only to throw themselves (literally, here) back into the fire and getting themselves nearly killed. Pepper was closer, though, and maybe that’s why she saw it before Happy did.

Petra was pulling the fire towards her, was shielding Morgan from it. The kid definitely didn’t have fire powers the last time Happy checked, so she had gotten herself into some more shit in the time she had been gone. She handed something to Morgan before bringing her towards Happy and Pepper.

“I did what I could to prevent damage, but some things were already damaged.”

“You saved Morgan, that’s all that matters.” Pepper was grasping her daughter as though she was never going to see her again. Petra’s smile was far too distant for Happy’s liking. Jon was quick to take his usual spot behind her. He had approached the entirety of the modern age like he thought it might kill him, like Petra would be a sufficient shield.

*

The aftermath of the fire, Happy saw more signs of that distance in her but it took something else to trigger a theory. She kept people as distantly from her as Tony and himself, acted as though people were temporary in her life, and it was FRIDAY that suggested looking at the pattern. She’d lost parental figures and been ripped from her home – perhaps it was a natural response to the course of her life.

What worried Happy after that was the lack of trust in Pepper and Happy where before she had acted as though there was nothing she could not share with them, to their chagrin. She had always trusted them on the basis Tony trusted them. Now, she moved and spoke and acted as though the trust was still there, but she was subdued. Happy couldn’t get a damn word out of her about what she had seen or done in the three years she had been missing. That leaves him with little course of action, given May isn’t an option, but there is Jon.

He waited until Jon was training, something he often did alone, and he keeps his eyes peeled. So much time around the Avengers means he has picked up a thing or two about interrogation and about seeing what people aren’t telling you by reading their body language. Jon is on edge the second Happy approaches him, doesn’t look comfortable with the idea of speaking with someone he barely knows. But he does follow Happy when asked, and he sits when prompted. He’s in his early twenties, not much older than Petra, but he acts like he is being caught red-handed breaking the rules.

“What can you tell me about Petra?”

He pauses a moment, looking like he can’t understand what it is Happy is asking until he gets a look of understanding. “Petrhaella? She’s the longest living being known in Westeros.”

“Longest what now?”

Jon proceeds to tell him a story that Happy cannot believe, even if it does give him all the answers he had been looking for.

People simply do not live over 400 years.

*

Ultimately, her age accounts for a few things. He sits with her one day and asks her about her time away. Asks her directly. The smile on her face makes _him_ feel like he just got caught rule-breaking.

“I don’t appreciate people navigating behind my back. Information is a valuable commodity; do not think I am so careless as to simply wave it around for all to see.”

“Are you going to answer my question?”

“You asked a very broad question, Happy Hogan. You’ll have to be more specific.”

“Who’d you meet?”

She smiles. “Kings, Queens, their lords, ladies, and sycophants. Masters and their whips, cult leaders, religious fanatics. Men whose honor got them killed, and ones whose ego and quest for power did the same. Women who could have done so much but died far too soon.

“Anything else you would like to know?”

She didn’t give him any names.

“Where did you end up?”

Her smile diminished, and there was pain in her face. Well-concealed pain, but old pain that bled through to her voice. “Valyria.”

That was an odd name. He looked at her again. She looked early twenties, but she shouldn’t be more than 19.

“How old are you?”

“Physically? About 23.”

“And actually?”

She smiled. “Oh, I stopped counting after a while. But I have it on reasonable authority it’s in the ballpark of 450.”


	3. "... And may you come to know great joy in your life."

May was ecstatic to get the phone call that Loki had success, that her niece was okay and alive, hale and whole. She had not prepared herself, though, for the fact her niece would have changed in that time. Petra was brought to her by Happy, brought to visit because she had a companion and there were a few odd things that could not be easily explained and it made Pepper and Happy just the shade of nervous that they wanted to keep an eye on her.

She had darker skin than when she left. Deeply tanned, like she had spent years under a scorching summer sun, and May would have thought nothing of it if she didn’t know for a fact that Petra burned, that she never tanned. Her hair was longer than she had ever let it grow before, styled up so that it did not fall in her face. Practical, yes, but also ornamental.

She had grown up, and without May beside her. She was a woman now, and one who wielded power and confidence with a deft hand. May had seen women like her before, had always pointed them out to Petra, but there was always a hesitance in her to think her niece would reach that sort of comfort.

“Aunt May.”

“She is your aunt?”

“Yes.” Pepper had kept them at the compound a few weeks, and said that the codependency she had initially seen seemed to relax as her companion became more comfortable with his surroundings and with the people around him. “This is Jaehaerys.

“He is a relative, if you will.”

*

May did not handle that information well. She brought them in, made tea, but did it all in complete silence. She did not say a word until she sat down, but evidently taking that time and processing the information had not been the right move, as Petra had a look on her face like she was judging every movement and word from May’s mouth. As though May had manipulated her in her silence.

“Is he…” she didn’t want to think she had missed all of the major milestones, but she had to accept that it may have happened. “Is he your brother-in-law?”

Petra raised an eyebrow. “Great-grandson, if we are being specific. And one of few of my descendants I’m truly proud of.”

Jaehaerys looked as though this was new information to him. “What do you mean?”

Petra straightened. “Your forefathers were often not very special. There is a reason the saying was that every time a Targaryen was born, the gods flipped a coin on madness and genius – they were causing their own downfall, and it only got worse with every generation.”

“You’re a Targaryen.”

“By marriage, only, and even that was tenuous at best.” She huffed half a laugh, and May could see something of the age Happy said she was claiming in her face. “Your ancestors were human, Jaehaerys. They were as flawed as all the other men in existence, and they often made horrible and exploitative decisions because it was in their interests. The game of thrones was started, in part, by putting their interests, and sometimes the interests of the family, over the interests of the kingdom or the people.

“Had you taken the Throne, I would have encouraged you to consider their faults more deeply. As it is, the damned Raven sits the Throne, and certainly for all his own faults he has the benefit of knowing the history rather intimately. He will make different mistakes, instead.”

May watched the way Petra spoke, how her hands hardly moved from her cup as she detailed her lesson to Jaehaerys – and that was exactly what it was – and how she looked toward him with a posture and set to her shoulders that suggested a teacher or authority in a subject. Jaehaerys responded to it, taking in the information.

“If the Targaryens were so terrible, why do you still use the name Rhaegar gave me?”

“Because you were the legitimate heir. Had Robert Baratheon not decided to kill your siblings, perhaps your uncle could have been more kind to you, more open with his wife. But the Baratheon words, _Ours is the Fury_ , those words are a promise, Jaehaerys, and they always have been.

“The Baratheons have never been a family to be trifled with, not since they entered the game as the lords of the Stormlands.”

“Who are the Baratheons?”

May was enthralled, as much as she was trying to get insight into her niece through her words, body language, and behavior. She wanted the information, wanted to know, wanted to understand if only so she could offer support to her niece. Petra stiffened, but looking to May and meeting her eyes while already speaking to Jaehaerys with the kind of tone and openness that a parent or grandparent often gave their descendants, she seemed to see what it was that May had hoped she would always know – that May was not there to hurt her. Not intentionally, anyway.

“The Baratheons are the now extinct family that ruled the Stormlands in Westeros when it was under Targaryen rule…”

And the story she started felt like a movie, like a television program, except Petra . She told of a family that came to power with her own son, that had married into her family generations later, and that ended with a drunkard with “more bastards than sense”.

They kept talking, and May nearly forgot that Petra would be leaving soon. She asked her to stay, before she left, to stay the night if only so there can be some time for them to talk. It had been three long years for May. Even if Petra was slipping periodically back into a stern distrust, that was still her niece and she still wanted her to know she was always welcome in this apartment and in May’s life.

She was May’s last connection to any family she had. Disowned for marrying Ben (for “marrying down” according to her sister) she had no reason to believe any calls now would be answered. If they were, she would not want to talk to her family, knowing that it would be seen as an admission of defeat. A man who got shot in the streets of New York because they couldn’t afford to live somewhere safer (somewhere more upscale, the cynic in her posited), and left with a child that wasn’t hers to begin with.

Petra was all she had left.

*

Petra staying the night left May to face the question of how she was supposed to relate to her without Jaehaerys between them. Petra was cleaning the mugs, and when she finished she directed her attention back toward May. “Would you like me to prepare dinner?”

“If you’d like.”

Her fridge had some stuff, though May still had her problems in the kitchen. If Petra could cook, that would be one more thing May wasn’t there for. She had, evidently, married and had children. May had missed major life milestones, but she was more than willing to hear about them.

She sat at the table and watched Petra move her knife across the ingredients with a deft hand. She was practiced in cooking, then. “You said you were married. What was he like?”

Petra paused, her knife slipping and gashing down into her hand and prompting her to paint a vivid, profanity-laden image of her pain. She pushed a cloth ( _That one’s dirty_ , the cynicism piped up, _she’s going to get an infection_ ). Before May could do anything to stop it, though, Petra was glaring at her hand and then at the light. She pulled fire, seemingly from nowhere, before pouring it into her wound and accelerating the (already suspiciously quick) healing process. She looked to May as she picked the knife up, preparing to rinse the blood off and resume her cooking.

“First, I should warn you that Jaehaerys is a family name. The Jaehaerys you met shares the name but bears no other similarity to his long dead grandfather.

“As to your question, I sincerely doubt you want to hear the details of that marriage.”

“Petra, you’re my niece. I’ve always been here for you, as much as you let me. If you want to talk about your husband, I fully intend to listen.”

Petra held her gaze. “Jaehaerys, my husband, was a terrible man, an awful husband, and a damn near murderous father. That Aegon turned out as he did was a miracle, and even then he hardly listened to me if it contradicted the ‘centuries of Targaryen tradition’.”

“Why did you marry him?” May had thought she had taught Petra to avoid those kinds of men, to protect herself from harm.

“Look at me, May. Really look at me. Does it look like I’ve been living in a world where I had the luxury of making certain choices?”

Her gown looked like the kind May saw in particularly nit-picky period dramas, the kind of gown that spoke of wealth, yes, but also of a time of painful restriction. Her hair was regal, yes, but what cost did that bear?

“Why did you marry him?” There still had to be a reason.

“Because he decided his drunkenness gave him the excuse to have his hired swords hold me down. Enhanced strength means nothing when you are tired from long days at work, weak from a lack of food, and when it is four men who have spent their lives building their strength that are being ordered to it. And when there was a bastard in me, his own father gave him the option of marrying me or losing his inheritance. I had something of a reputation by then, he was not truly offering his son the option. He knew that with a bastard there was little I could do, but to bind me into his family would be the sort of thing that would bring the smallfolk to fear him more. I was nothing more than a political pawn to him, May. And I had no other options. Not there, not when it was the future of my unborn child in the equation.”

And if that did anything, it broke Mays heart further.

“Thank you for trusting me.”

“It has nothing to do with trust.” Petra tenses, as though she recognizes this was the wrong thing to say, the wrong direction to go. “I do trust you. As much as I trust people nowadays. I barely trust Jaehaerys, and only because… only because I have had to trust him. We were not in a position to betray one another, and it forged at least something of a bond between us.

“That is my history, though. It was as much public knowledge as the actions of my son, and while perhaps its prominence in memory faded with time, it was still known.

“I was the wife of a man who raped me, and I have accepted that fact and long outlived him.”

May put her hand out, offering it to Petra. Petra gripped the knife a bit tighter, looked to the ingredients still sitting out on the counter, still waiting to be finished. “Petra.”

“I can’t. May, I love you, I missed you, but it was so long, May. You all have acted as though three years here meant the same there, but it didn’t, it doesn’t. May, please understand. I love you dearly, I would kill for you, but do not ask me to tell you anymore. Not of Jaehaerys, not of Valryia, or Westeros, or Aegon. Please.”

The emotion playing across Petra’s face twisted it like it was a physical pain. Perhaps it was, if she had been spending so much time holding things to the chest, and May let her hand fall.

There had been a time where it would have been _I would die for you_ , and May would have been just as uncomfortable with the idea as ever. That it was _I would kill for you_ , that twisted May’s gut and felt almost like a betrayal.

*

The morning saw Petra up before May. While the night before had still been tense, Petra had not left. Had made the effort to engage with May and to hold her as closely as she once had.

The morning saw a cup of coffee at May’s spot at the table, saw breakfast made when May wandered out, and saw Petra fresh-faced and standing with as much confidence and power as she had when she arrived. “I hope you like eggs and sausages, because I did not find the flour for any sort of biscuits with it.”

“That’s just fine.”

“I missed these breakfasts, I’ll admit.” She laughed. “In Valyria, it wasn’t often we were fed. And by the time Aegon was King of the Seven Kingdoms, I had grown rather fond of Braavos once more, and sought to stay at least some time there.”

May reached out, and this time Petra held her hand. “I will always be here. I know it may not be easy to believe after everything. But I’ll always be your aunt, I’ll always love you, and I will always, _always_ be in your corner.”

Petra smiled. “I knew an old woman. As she died, she left me with her final wishes, the last of which was that I might see joy in my life.

“I thought, for a long while, that it may never come to pass. I think, though, she was seeing far longer than I could. And it may still be a ways off, but May, you have always been a sincere and important part of the joys of my early life. And as I come closer to that, to her final wish, please know that while my trust is hard won, and while my loyalty has grown aggressive, that still stands true.

“If I do reach that point, reach that joy, I hope and pray to He of Many Faces that you remain as such.”


End file.
